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Star

Sweet Baboo decided a few weeks ago that Netflix would fill a yawning hole in our viewing pleasure. Being a self-proclaimed documentary loving geek, I totally agreed and voila, we signed up.

Immediately, I started queuing up space and universe documentaries. Total heaven!! LOVE those shows and in HD they’re even better. Maybe it’s because I was watching so many that a lot of what was being said actually stuck with me.

And this just boggles my mind.

When you look up at the night sky, you will see about 2,500 stars with the naked eye at any point anywhere on earth. There are about 5800 to 8000 visible stars total. However, astronomers estimate that there are about 200 BILLION stars contained within our galaxy, The Milky Way. This is an artist’s rendition , of course. But still. It’s a pretty spiral galaxy, isn’t it?

So, 200 or so billion stars in our galaxy, which is actually an average sized galaxy. Dwarf galaxies can have as little as 10 million or so stars, and gigantic mega monstrous galaxies can have as many as 10 trillion.

And how many galaxies are there? Conservative estimates are placed at between 100 and 200 billion. Other estimates put it at around 500 billion.

And with these numbers in mind, a rough estimate of stars in the universe are set at 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars. Lottsa stars. Uber stars. More than we can ever count. Kinda makes you step back and think, doesn’t it?

I used Universe Today with all of their fabulous articles to assemble the facts that I’ve listed. It’s a great resource for anything space or universe related. I like to get lost in their pages — I never know where I’ll end up. (No pun intended!)